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How often and how clearly we have been told - by the near-legendary "Silbey Report" on student life and learning, by assorted deans and other administrators, by various faculty committees – that MIT sorely lacks informal, outside-the-classroom contact between faculty and students.
Perhaps so. But not, I must argue, at the close of the term. The informal aspect covers the frequency – very nearly the universality – of final-class food-oriented gatherings. As I walked the corridors of Building 14 on the last day of classes last spring, I was torn with guilt; I may well have been the only member of the faculty who normally teaches in that building who did not even bring in a box of Dunkin' Munchkins. Tea parties, ethnic feasts, and the predictable (but always popular) pizza: to mimic the title of that movie of some years ago, "joy seemed to reign supreme."
But then there are those elaborate celebratory dinners sponsored by programs, departments, laboratories, and the like, honoring prize-winning seniors, long-time participants, as well as the occasional faculty hanger-on, in which category I managed to find myself, three times. The cliché is, of course, "If you feed them, they will come." The same rule applies to me.
But it was not just the food (none of the meals were Ritz-quality, after all), nor the formulaic commendatory speeches (how many ways are there to say, "Nice job, guys?"). It was the fact that, at each gathering, there were students I had gotten to know, in some guise or other, over the course of their MIT careers. Some were students who stood out from the usual, high-quality crowd. Some were present or former advisees – the particular connection really didn't matter. We had achieved (at least on my side) a certain degree of friendship, and (in the case of those about to graduate to other worlds and other endeavors) I would in fact miss them.
All of which came to mind as the CUP and the CSL pondered the weighty and complex issue of mentoring/advising, which has been a major joint focus for some months. One issue that was foregrounded was that of incentives. What, it was wondered, would persuade people who are already inhumanly overworked to take on the time- and energy-consuming task of advising younger colleagues and students. I don't mean to oversimplify the problem – it is real, and difficult to resolve. But one thing seemed not to be put on the table: contact with the brightest adolescents in the known universe is simply fun. I risk, I know, sentimentality – but so be it. As I "worked the crowd" at the Athletic Department banquet, shaking the hands of members of the women's soccer and hockey teams, and the men's track and football teams whom I knew, I found myself musing, aloud, on the issue of why I was spending an evening away from home. "Well," one student kindly - and I think accurately - reminded me, "you had to come to this. You're family."
I wonder: is not the friendly and informal contact with intelligent and imaginative younger people the major reason why one undertakes a career as a professor? Heaven knows there are less stressful and more remunerative paths most of us might have taken. Neither of my parents could ever figure out why I didn't go to law school.
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